State Suddenly Adds 479 COVID Cases to County’s All-Time Total

Backlog Delayed Reporting; More Than 2,000 County Residents Have Had COVID Since Pandemic Began

Fayette County had a lot more coronavirus cases in December and January than previously thought.

The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) informed Fayette County officials last Friday they resolved a database backlog. The fix, however, will result in an estimated 479 newly-reported cases for Fayette County. That’s a 31 percent increase from the 1,535 cases reported by the County last Thursday, Jan. 28.

“We have known for a while now that DSHS databases have been experiencing delays in reporting to our County, but did not know the extent of the problem,” said Craig Moreau, Fayette County Emergency Management Chief. “They notified us this week that they will enter all of the backlogged information to our County on Feb. 1.”

In an email to the County last Friday, DSHS said most of the previously-unreported cases came from December and January.

“As most of these cases are old, most will show up as recovered and not active,” Moreau said. “But there will be some active cases in the mix. The silver lining in this is that we have more recovered cases than we believed.”

In a phone call on Sunday, Moreau said he did not yet know if there were any fatalities associated with the new cases. Nor did he know the number of active cases.

“I should know some details by Friday,” he said.

Moreau said all 28 counties in DSHS Region 7 were affected by the database backlog.

Many counties are having the same problem,” he said. “Everything we do with emergency management and public health is designed for small emergencies. You don’t expect a hurricane to hit the entire country at one time.

“The last time we dealt with something like this was 100 years ago,” Moreau said, referring to the Spanish Flu pandemic. “Public health needs a lot more resources.”

Vaccine Update

Fayette County was not scheduled to get any more allocations of first-dose vaccines this week, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

However, the Vaccination SubHub, which is serving Fayette, Austin, Burleson, Grimes, Waller and Washington County was scheduled to get 4,000 more vaccines this week.

Agents have been making calls to those on the registration list to schedule vaccine appointments for Tuesday, February 2, 2021. To date, approximately 4,500 Texans have received a vaccine from the subHUB.

As of Sunday evening, January 31, 2021, all those on the current registration list have been contacted or three attempts have been made. Officials state that every effort has been made through local media, social media, various websites, and several automated messages via text and phone call to let people know to anticipate the call.

Online pre-registration is now available at www.localevent.info and will automatically close when 5,000 people have pre-registered. Once pre-registered, you will be contacted by an agent, in the order the form was received, to set up a vaccine time slot. The Google hosted form allows you to enter your information. If there is a large number of people attempting to fill out the Google form at the same time, be aware it may take time and/or the page may need to be refreshed. Pre-registration will reopen when all those on the list have been vaccinated. This cycle will continue as long as the state continues to allocate vaccines to the subHUB.